West Coast coach Adam Simpson is increasingly confident the ‘mini pre-season’ period will be enough time to prepare for the 2020 campaign restart after seeing the Eagles return to training on Monday.
Split into groups of up to eight, players and coaches hit the Mineral Resources Park track for the first time in eight weeks and got back into the swing of training again with some short and sharp non-contact work on field followed by weights.
It was a significant step forward after months of uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Simpson was pleased to see his troops back at the club, which has been operating with a skeleton staff in recent times.
“It felt good. We were a little bit worried about breaking protocol but once we got through that we had a pretty good system in place,” Simpson told Channel Seven.
“We had groups of eight, no more than two groups on the oval at once, and we went through the production line pretty well and hopefully we got through unscathed.
“Today was really just about getting that interaction again and get off that Zoom and get face-to-face.
“It’s a fair spike in what we can do next week – two training sessions where we get full contact and one a little bit like today.
“I think there’s enough time to get people ready. Looking at our players in particular obviously they look pretty good.
“We’re going to be missing some contact and the physical elements of how you recover and pull up from week to week, that will definitely take time, so we’ll be a bit unders but I think we’ll be OK.”
Simpson declared West Coast was keen to get into action again on the Gold Coast and said the club was comfortable staying in Queensland for up to a month.
Families could join players and staff at Royal Pines Resort, however those details are yet to be decided ahead of the mid-June resumption.
“Every family has got different circumstances and with the quarantine laws on return it’s difficult to just plan to go there for a week or so then come back knowing they’ve got to come back and quarantine for two weeks,” Simpson said.
“It’s a bit of a challenge, it’s probably harder than what people think and it’s definitely not a holiday either, so just working through all those things the next week or so.”
